The Sub-Gatsby Phantasmagoria by Anthony Scaramucci's Book Party

"I dreamed the American dream," wrote Anthony Scaramucci in his memoir, "Trump, Blue-Collar President", a work of Trump Hagiography, which…

“I dreamed the American dream,” wrote Anthony Scaramucci in his memoir, “Trump, Blue-Collar President”, a work of Trump Hagiography, which also tells about Mooch’s rise from the Long Island to Goldman Sachs to eleven funny days, the White House Communication Department, before being bled to propose a New Yorker reporter that Steve Bannon was metaphorically “trying to suck [his] his own cock.” No hard feelings about the firing, but. Trump is a “genius”, insists Scaramucci in his book. Watching him on television is “like watching Joe DiMaggio play for the Schreiber High Schools baseball team.” (The diamond serves as one of many Moochian touchstones, as well as F. Scott Fitzgerald, “one of my early favorite writers.”) For Scaramucci, the president incarnates Jay Gatsby, surrounded by glittering wealth yet adapted to the forgotten fighting of the past, back when The catskill mountain was longer than the Himalayas and “primitive versions of the vampire bat, a distant ancestor of Steve Bannon, I think” hung “up and down the caves.” If all this sounds grandiose, bad. “Have you ever met a successful person who did not have an ego?” Scaramucci, a man once characterized as “the human performance of a double-parked BMW”, writes. “When you combine enough self-sufficient self-esteem, and you add my personality, as some have been categorized as” wacky “, produced is a supercharged sales engine that can drive you nuts or charm you, or both,” he explains.

On Monday evening, in the evening of the release of the book, SkyBridge Capital, Scaramucci’s investment company, a group of celebrities gathered to drink wine and nibble on hanger steak served from huge shiny buffet dishes at the Hunt & Fish Club, the Middle Chest House once described by New York Post as the place “Where Beauties Trawl for Sugar Daddies.” The room has a power-lunch atmosphere, even at 7 pm (It is understood that “power lunch” vibe is achieved by importing a dusk, a luxury afternoon in the middle of the day.) Plastic lights hang up and down from the ceiling and emits a soft glow in a room filled with Brooks Brothers costumes, millenium pink ribbon and crisp, grinning faces. The women wear floating “out of town” hair and coat dresses. And then standing on the backside, next to a bar ornament with red and white roses. Young people stand in front of a screen next to the leaning tower of “Trump, Blue-Collar President”, pointing to the books and then to themselves and then to their drinks and then on the chandeliers. In addition to wine and spirits, the bar offers a special cocktail called When Life Gives You Lemons. “Trump, Blue-Collar President” strives to be a comeback story, with Scaramucci in the role of Rocky “when the music starts to swell and Balboa rises from the carpet … when Apollo Creed begins to worry.”

Everyone here seems to work in economics. “Do you work in economics?” I’m starting to ask. I’m talking to a guy from Long Island, one of the best friends in Scaramucci’s cousin Augie. He and Augie have just launched an adventure company together. Augie’s friend seems to be tickled by the banker-fancy decor. Even though he had not read Tony’s book yet, he wanted to show up for the neighbor who did well, the “character” he admits is “fun to talk with, very colorful.” I ask how he knows the president. “No comment,” he says, glittering. Then he looks worried: “Maybe I should not be here.”

The energy in the room connects and condenses. Mooch has landed and a cloud of admirers drops with their unsigned copies and their iPhones. A woman drives her date towards the epicenter with an exasperated elevator: “He’s your friend. Support him!” I approach the cum of designer watches and Dolce & Gabbana. “Are you friends with Tony?” I ask a blonde woman, her striking eyes hooded in indigo shadow. Her partner bars: “She is the beauty group for the whole family!” For a moment, I think he says “mortician”. On a wardrobe table someone has put a blue collar with Scaramucci name known over it. I’m talking to Chris Windle, Operation Manager at Allied / All-City, a tool and pipeline service company. He has a bejeweled crucifix on a gold chain and chats with his friend George Sigelakis, who revolutionizes the firewater. Sigelakis, a former firefighter, has designed an extra durable, tamper-resistant hydrant that resists both rust and corrosion. We look at pictures on his phone. Windle says he likes to talk to people who do not agree with him. The important thing, he says, is that we can talk to each other. I think of the firefight’s aptitude as a metaphor to dousing our inflamed national discourse. I also think of the “Trump, Blue-Collar President” section, where Scaramucci dares that Trump can be uniquely adapted to bridge political divisions because he does not care about anything but himself.

At about eight, the three-tier cake-topped with a meringue Resolute desk, a Maringue Donald Trump and a Rictus Marion Mooch-disappears and returns as pale slices banded with cannoli cream. It tastes weak of the pumpkin. “Do you taste the pumpkin?” Do I ask a financial brother. “No,” he says, leaving. I sit down with Curtis Ellis, a Republican operator who first met Scaramucci on the Trump campaign and is now working for America First Policies, a Trump-supporting super-PAC. He tells me that the president is playing well. When Trump is reflected in 2020, the regime of fineness will end. “It will be the night of the long knives”, Elli’s prophecy.

For now it is the night of swinging plastic light. I should have left half an hour since, but the servers take out chocolate cake cakes and a woman’s voice plays from the speakers like the ghost of one hundred forgotten Americans. Here is a Gatsby dream: a frying pan, white tablecloths, white party sweaters, sparkling cufflinks bought with Goldman Sach’s salary. The Long Islanders share the phantasmic Manhattanites with their hands. The Meringue president has a white collar.